Surgical retractors and expanders are used to manipulate a patient's tissues, such as skin, muscle, or bone, and are commonly utilized by surgeons and dentists on the human body and by veterinarians on animals. Retractors have blades that tend to pull the tissue to create more room for a surgeon to view an area of interest, such as a body cavity, and to manipulate other surgical tools. Expanders perform a similar function by tending to push the tissue instead of pulling it. Retractors and expanders are available in a variety of blade sizes and shapes to pull and push different body tissues in different locations on the body. For example, the blade can be curved to lift or separate a portion of the patient's tissues. When both retraction and expansion are needed, a surgeon commonly uses a separate device for each function. This further crowds the patient's body cavity and often requires additional operating assistants to manipulate and hold each device.
While manipulating the patient's tissues, it is important to adequately illuminate the corresponding region of the patient's body. As ambient light is not always sufficient to light a body cavity, illumination is commonly accomplished by a separate light. This light generally must then be held in place near the body cavity by an operating assistant or by some sort of rigging, further crowding the surgical area.
Furthermore, many of the existing devices must be sterilized between uses, a process that may be expensive and time-consuming. Even with sterilization procedures, however, there remains a risk of pathogen cross infection because the instrument will be used more than once. Furthermore, such instruments are often made of metal and are difficult to hold for long periods of time.
There is therefore a need for a surgical instrument that combines the functions of retraction, expansion, and illumination into a single device while remaining easy to handle. There is further a need for such an instrument to be disposable after a single use, yet remain economical.